From Anxiety to Confidence

With less than a week to go before we push the touch screen and vote for the ersatz leaders of our country for the next two to six years, it's time to move from anxiety to confidence. Don't let yourself be numbed into distraction by the "Dancing with the Stars" soap opera, Madonna's new kid and Ryan & Reese's break-up. Forget JK's badly delivered joke and Babs' using her concerts as a forum for dissent. We don't have to defend their opinions nor their rights to them. What each person who loves this country the way we do must embrace is our own vision for a fair, free and open government.

This Congress has legislated closing our borders, shutting down habeas corpus, turning off the lights on freedom of information and damming our rights to privacy. They warn us that terrorists want to limit our abilities to enjoy our way of life while the laws they enact do just that. They want to limit the rights of Americans who happen to be gay, and see it as a rallying cry when the courts do their job of constitutional oversite.

Now they want to follow the old tradition of European racism and make Muslim women take off their burkas and hijabs. What group will be hit next? Sikhs forced to abandon their turbans? Rastas their locks? Jews their yarmulkas? Maybe they'll want black folks to bleach themselves.

Curiously, the people that advocate cultural homogenization are the same ones who see no problem with a nativity scene in the public square. Obviously they believe that if it's not White and Christian, then it's not American. I'd like to think they're wrong about that.

If there is anyone to be afraid of, it is the Nuremberg Law mentality of this administration and the Congress that enables it. How long do you think it will be before the so-called Minute Men on the border storm the U.S. border towns like Brown-shirts, drag Latino women and children from their home and put them on a bus to Mexico (after a beating to "teach them a lesson")? I heard on Marketplace yesterday that Malaysia is forming enforcement groups to do just that with their "illegal" Indonesian immigrants who come to Kuala Lumpur for the unskilled factory jobs that Malaysians won't do.

So don't be afraid of the terrorists, my friends. You're odds of winning the lottery are about the same as dying in a terrorist attack. If there is something to fear it is this good-for-business government that wants the rights we are guaranteed in this country to belong only to those who can pay for it. When Karl Rove refers to the Christian Right as "nuts", he means any idealogue voter, including us. The only vote they really want is the money vote, and fuck the rest of us.

As Streisand would say, "Shut the fuck up!" Now go vote. Maybe we can make this one count.

-PBG